Walter Leigh - the Eric Ravilious of Music?

A few days ago I went to Dulwich to see the Eric Ravilious exhibition (which ends on August 31st) and was both delighted and appalled to see that it was packed with vistors. I partly blame James Russell, the exhibition's curator, for tirelessly promoting Ravilious's work and producing some gorgeous hardback books, but the other culprit must surely be the internet.

Part of the appeal of Ravilious is, I think, the fact that he celebrates England in a manner that is free of bombast or sentimentality, finding beauty in the mundane and commonplace. It is an art that can only have been created by the generation who came of age after the First World War.

As many will know, Ravilious's life came to a premature end in 1942, when a plane he was travelling in as a war artist went missing off the coast of Iceland, on September 2nd.

Less well known is a death that took place ten weeks earlier, when a young composer called Walter Leigh was killed in action at Tobruk.

Born in Wimbledon, exactly two years to the day after Ravilious, on June 22nd, Walter Leigh grew up in a middle class family and began having music tuition at the age of eight. His early years are something of a mystery, but thanks to this website, we know that when he was at Cambridge, Leigh decided to switch from studying English to Music.

After Cambridge, Leigh travelled to Berlin and, like several of his contemporaries, studied with the German composer Hindemith. It was there that Leigh began to develop a style that mirrors Eric Ravilious in its clarity and restraint, eschewing melodrama in favour of a gentle, understated melancholy.

Here is Walter Leigh's greatest work, the exquisite Concertino for Harpsichord and Strings:



If you can't face hearing more than a couple of minutes, skip to 3:23 and try the sublime middle movement. Listening to this work is always a bittersweet experience, as I can't help wondering what Leigh would have gone on to write if he'd survived the War.

Another gorgeous piece that I find quietly heart-rending is the first movement of Leigh's 'Music for Strings':



But like Ravilious, Walter Leigh wasn't precious about his art and would happily write in a more populist style if the commission called for it.


Walter Leigh died at the age of 37. Unlike Eric Ravilious, he didn't leave a huge body of work behind and a projected symphony never progressed beyond the stage of rough sketches. But the chamber, piano and orchestral works that exist show a composer of exceptional gifts who, had he lived, would have become a major figure in British musical life.